• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.40
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• pp.111-131
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• 2015

An unusual success engendering loyalty among cult fans in the United States, Mamoru Oshii's 1995 cyberpunk anime, Ghost in the Shell (GITS) revolves around a female cyborg assassin named Motoko Kusanagi, a.k.a. "the Major." When the news came out last year that Scarlett Johansson was offered 10 million dollars for the role of the Major in the live action remake of GITS, the frustrated fans accused DreamWorks of "whitewashing" the classic Japanimation and turning it into a PG-13 film. While it would be premature to judge a film yet to be released, it appears timely to revisit the core achievement of Oshii's film untranslatable into the Hollywood formula. That is, unlike ultimately heteronormative and humanist sci-fi films produced in Hollywood, such as the Matrix trilogy or Cloud Atlas, GITS defies a Hollywoodization by evoking much bafflement in relation to its queer, posthuman characters and settings. This essay homes in on Major Kusanagi's body in order to update prior criticism from the perspectives of posthumanism and queer theory. If the Major's voluptuous cyborg body has been read as a liberating or as a commodified feminine body, latest critical work of posthumanism and queer theory causes us to move beyond the moralistic binaries of human/non-human and male/female. This deconstruction of binaries leads to a radical rethinking of "reality" and "identity" in an image-saturated, hypermediated age. Viewed from this perspective, Major Kusanagi's body can be better understood less as a reflection of "real" women than as an embodiment of our anxieties on the loss of self and interiority in the SNS-dominated society. As is warned by many posthumanist and queer critics, queer and posthuman components are too often used to reinforce the human. I argue that the Major's hybrid body is neither a mere amalgam of human and machine nor a superficial postmodern blurring of boundaries. Rather, the compelling combination of individuality, animality, and technology embodied in the Major redefines the human as always, already posthuman. This ethical act of revision-its shifting focus from oppressive humanism to a queer coexistence-evinces the lasting power of GITS.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.480-490
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• 2007

Changes in political and economic environments require a new concept of 'culture' and a paradigm shift in cultural policies. Especially, broadcasting is needed to construct a productive infra-structure in order to play its role as culture industry in multi-channel environments caused by the progress of digital technology. In addition, Korea-USA FTA Agreement and a subsequently expected open policy of broadcasting market raise issues of a flow of foreign capital and a compatibility of cultural diversities and cultural identities. From this perspective, this study attempts to suggest alternatives for cultural diversity of program contents in new global media environments. More specifically, these alternatives examine the meaning and achievements of co-production of broadcasting programs as an active and direct method to preserve cultural identities and universalities of cultural contents at the same time. Details of this study are as follows: thorough review of internation co-production and program format industries and their possibilities to overcome cultural harriers and to provide local alternatives.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.48
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• pp.253-287
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to examine the ethnic phenomenon in the multi-layered context, based upon data collected from my fieldwork in Asella Town, Ethiopia. The town has experienced few ethnic conflicts at the collective level because of ecological conditions, the numerical balance between the two major ethnic groups-i.e., the Oromo and the Amhara-, frequent ethnic intermarriages as well as effects of a unique sociocultural practice of 'breast-feeding.' However, despite positive influences of such a practice, the local community has continuously witnessed discrimination and threats by the dominant ethnic group. Most of my informants feel that ethnic intermarriage contributes to: (i) enforcement of bonds among both ethic groups and community members, (ii) acquisition of different ethnic cultures, (iii) cultivation of the spirit of tolerance among people, and (iv) production of the superior second generation that has hybrid/multiple ethnic identities. However, some informants harbor negative attitudes towards ethnic intermarriage because they perceive it as a selfish choice of two parties and damages ethnic identity. Most informants consider ongoing Oromonization as natural, whereas others insist that it should be understood in the context of coercion, superficiality and survival strategy.

• (The) Research of the performance art and culture
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• no.22
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• pp.223-252
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• 2011

If we remember that modern world history has built systems of meaning through the concepts "difference," "different," and "other-ness" and has constructed new identity based on opposing hierarchy, music anthropology which tried to build "difference" between the west and the non-west was thoroughly west -centered, in the sense that it has perceived the heterogeneous symbolic systems among nations, as well as the barrier between the two cultures. On the other hand, world music, which has emerged as the most attractive field in culture industry and concert-art-market by crossing over global capitals, markets, and barriers, can be considered the most post-modernist and glocal. However, it is interesting to note that world music, which has been described as post-modern and glocal, has "difference" and "different" in its basis, just like the precepts for modern music anthropology (Meintjes 1990; Guilbault 1993; Taylor 1997; Frith 2000; Feld 1988). Furthermore, one can understand that the "different" and "difference," generally termed as being "non-western," are fundamentally based on ethnic or national imagination. In this sense it is interesting and important to examine such ethnic imagination in the "non-western ethnic musics" in music anthropology and in world music. Notwithstanding the attention paid and research made by music anthropologists, they have failed to elevate the "non-western ethnic musics" to become universally communicative, and these ethnic musics were reborn as "global" and "world music," through the process of "acculturation," "derivation," and "hybridization," with the west as major site for production and consumption. Meanwhile, the audience for world music, which did not exist before the birth of world music as a term, was now born as world music emerged. They are global populace who consume the musical "difference" and "imagined ethnicity," who through their consumption are constructing new social meanings including ethnicity, race, nation, and class identity. This study, by examining current discourse, performance, and process for the world music through media and field studies and scholarly debates, attempts to understand the production and consumption of "imagined ethnicity." This will also shed light on how "ethnicity" is created and consumed, and how this is involved in the process of world music.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.93-106
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• 2019

Persona is an actor's external ego constructed by playing various roles, and his/her another self-portrait in the eyes of the audience. This study was conducted to analyze persona identity containing core persona(CP) and to gain implications for the growth strategy of the actress Son Ye-jin called "melo queen" by verifying consistency between the CP and audience responses to her starring works of the past. According to the related theories and models, the persona was firstly set as image, visuality, personality and consistency, and it was used to extract and sort descriptive texts about Son related news articles in the last 5 years of the six major Korean newspapers using the content analysis method. After that, we analyzed the number of viewers of her movies and the audience share of her dramas by genre. As a result, Son's persona components were found to have a proportion for 54.2% images (34.0% for melo and romance images, 20.2% for non-melo and romance images), 25.6% for visibility, 13.8% for consistency, and 6.4% for personality. Her CP was derived from a melo and romance image. Comparing this with the audience reaction, the melo romance genre dominated and showed consistency in the drama, but in the case of the film, the non-melo romance was dominant and did not match each other. The results were attributed to a wide gap between dramas and movies in terms of key viewers, box office factors, degree of genre hybridity and experimentality. Therefore, Son should actively use her CP in the drama and challenge the various roles in order to expand her persona spectrum in the film.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.461-477
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• 2010

Recent environmental issues such as genetically modified organisms, the loss of biodiversity, climate change, and nuclear waste cannot be reduced to a matter of science or society and explained through nature-society dualist approaches because of their complexity and heterogeneity. This paper examines how nature-society dualism has been embedded in science studies and geography and how this dualism can be overcome. Actor-Network Theory as an attempt to overcome this nature-society dualism is appropriate in analysing "strange imbriglio" of biology, politics, technoscience, market, value, ethics and facts that constitute our society by focusing on heterogeneous association, and can contribute to providing a useful framework to solve environmental problems.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.37-43
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• 2019

Korean dramas since the 2000s are continuously experimenting with new narrative possibilities. Especially in the recent Korean drama, various modes of hybridization, mixing, and transformation are attempted. Therefore, this study aims to examine the consensus of literature and drama through popular drama in 2010. This study examines how literary texts are utilized in dramas through the use of Kim Eun-sook's lonely and glorious god-goblin and gentleman's dignity, and how these narrative and visual effects are gained. These two dramas are not only popular drama in Korea but also have important implications for interpreting literature and drama consciousness because they actively utilize literary texts in drama. This is the process of interpreting the main scene in which literature and the drama conspire, and grasping its significance. Through this study, we analyze the process of borrowing the part of the text of the text, drama, and taking the effect of storytelling by using 'book' as its materiality. This will confirm the way in which various genres are mixed and juxtaposed in one video text and its effects.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.135-140
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• 2023

In the era of globalization, universal values and empathy are analyzed as important factors in the success of media content. In this context, the perspective of interculturalism is meaningful in K-culture discourse. The TV drama <Itaewon Class> presented a storytelling structure in which the existing order was overturned and new values triumphed. This concept has led to great success in the global market. First of all, it shows multiculturality through the symbolic space of Itaewon. It reproduces people who have various cultural differences in various standards. Characters with diverse values realize intercultural values through cultural dialogue. Such storytelling is evaluated as something that can be widely accepted by people around the world. Interculturalism enables us to seek the direction of sustainable Korean Wave.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.42
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• pp.505-524
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• 2016

This study examines the ways District 9, a film released in 2009, reworks the sci-fi genre to explore the human encounter with "other" alien populations. Like Avatar, released in the same year, District 9 addresses the tropes of conflict over land and human-alien hybridity and introduces non-humans and aliens, not as invaders, but as objects of human oppression and cruelty. Unlike many other science fiction films where the encounter between humans and non-humans occurs in an unidentifiable future time and location, District 9 crosses genre barriers to engage with urban realism, producing a social critique of contemporary urban population problems. The arrival of aliens in District 9 occurs as part of the recorded human past and the film's action is carried out in the present time in the specifically identified city of Johannesburg. A distinctly anti-Hollywood film that locates the action at the street level, District 9 plays out human anxieties about contact with others by referencing the divisions and conflicts historically attached to South Africa's sprawling metropolis and its current problems of urban poverty and illegal immigrants. Focusing on how this particular urban setting frames the film, the study investigates the ways Blomkamp's sci-fi film about extra-terrestrials presents a curious postcolonial mix of aliens and immigrants surviving in abject conditions in an urban slum and forces a realistic examination of the contemporary social problems faced by South Africa's largest city and by extension other major global cities. The paper also examines the film's representation of the human-alien hybrid and its potential as a force to resist human exploitation of the other. It also claims that though the setting is highly local, District 9 speaks to a wider global audience by making obvious the exploitative practices of profit-seeking multinationals. A sci-fi film that is keen on making a social commentary on urban population conflicts, District 9 resonates with the wider sense of insecurity and fear of others that form the horizon of the uncertain and potentially violent contemporary human world.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.46
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• pp.63-84
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• 2017

Overwhelming images of vividly colored aircraft flying across the blue sky and steam gushing from massive machines are reminiscent of Japanese animation films, especially of works by master director Hayao Miyazaki. By presenting together steam engines, which are mechanical devices of the Industrial Age in the past, and aircraft of the future age, the director constructs ambiguous space and time. These special time and space constitute nostalgia for past time, with devices called steam engines as a medium, and a longing for science and the future as represented by aircraft. In addition, the anticipation and disappointment, ideals and regrets of humans who see these two from the perspective of the present are projected on the works. This shares the characteristic of the steam punk genre, which seeks to return to the past rather than to face current problems. A subgenre of science fiction (henceforth "sci-fi"), steam punk reflects fundamental skepticism of science and technology and mechanized civilization, which have developed beyond human control. In addition, as works that clearly display such characteristics, director Miyazaki's and < $Nausica{\ddot{a}}$ of the Valley of Wind> can be examined. With spectacles of steam engines and aircraft, these two works enticingly visualize narratives about nature and humans and about the environment and destruction. Such attractiveness on the part of the master director's works has led to support from fans worldwide. However, often in the backgrounds of director Miyazaki's works, which have depicted ideal worlds of nature, environment, and community as highly concentrated fantasies, lie presuppositions of war and the end of the world. As works that are especially prominent in such characteristics, there are and . These two works betray the expectations of the audience by establishing the actual wartime as the temporal background and proceeding toward narratives of reality. Trapped in the ontological identity of the director himself, the war depicted by him projects a subjective and romantic attitude. Such a problem stems also from the ambiguity of the hybrid space and time, which is basic to the steam punk genre. This is because the basic characteristic of steam punk is to transplant past time, which humans were able to control, in the future from a perspective of optimism and longing via steam engines rather than to face current problems. In this respect, steam punk animation films in themselves can be seen as having significance and limitations at the same time.